“Narc-what?”

We skedaddle on over there, to find the nice fire crew already on scene. From what the friend says, the unconscious guy on the floor took a bite of a chicken sandwich then passed out and turned blue.

Somebody is bagging this guy, but “his sat is good with the bag, so I didn’t tube him.”

His vitals are okay, except for the unconscious part. He is breathing on his own, about 10 times a minute. Sugar’s normal. Heart rate is normal. Pressure is better than mine. Something about pinpoint pupils, but whatever. Everything is going smoothly so far.

While I’m thinking of the logistics of how to get this unconscious fellow up two flights of stairs, I hear some wonderkid say “Narcan.”

My ears immediately perk up, and my head turns as I say “dowhatnow?” But they don’t hear me. They are too busy talking amongst themselves.

“Yeah, we might as well.”

“It ain’t gonna hurt nuthin.”

“Yeah, it can’t hurt.”

“How much you want me to give?”*

“Give half of it.”**

“Okay.”

I interject. “Uh, if we’re gonna give naloxone, how about we go with point-four milligrams instead of one?”

“So you want me to give a fourth of the vial?”***

“Uh…”

The other guy speaks up: “Just eyeball half of it, it’ll be alright.”****

Before I can begin to process the shit show of patient care that just occurred right in front of my eyes and ears, someone gives ‘about half the vial’ of naloxone.

You know what happens next, don’t you?

Homey promptly awakens, retches, and coughs up a humongous piece of a chicken sandwich, which was obviously lodged somewhere north of his vocal cords.***** (It was just too big to go past the cords. Imagine you took a huge bite of a sandwich, and decided to inhale it without chewing. Yeah.)

My head is literally about to explode at this point.

* Personally, I don’t want you to give any, but the question wasn’t being asked of me.

** ”Half?” Is your partner not intelligent enough to read the numbers on the side of the little cute glass tube?

*** Okay, now we know you can’t read, and you suck at math. For the record, zero-point-four is one-fifth of 2 milligrams. Or twenty percent.

**** Seriously, I heard a paramedic say this. In the company of 4 other paramedics. Have you no shame, mustachioed dude?

***** Seriously, what the hell is going on here? The call was for “choking” and you arrived on scene to find an unconscious guy lying on the floor with a fucking chicken sandwich in his hand missing a bite. Did nobody think to look in his airway? A blade and a set of forceps would have done fixed this problem a long time ago, but now this guy’s going to have to sit in a hospital for a few hours.

Newguy and I are left to try to pick up what remains of our jaws from the floors. We literally can’t believe the serious shit-show we just saw happen. And meanwhile, these yahoos are patting themselves on the back.